My wonderful XW picked the stereotypical exact opposite of me. They make quite the sight. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if XW was a little more low key, especially when it comes to her hair colors now. But OM? Hehe, everytime X and I are able to casually speak and she brings him up I always have to say, 'you could of done a hell of a lot better'.
Downgrade? UNDERSTATEMENT.
Me 35/XW 33 S13 & S12 M: 10/17/98 OM & S: 07/08 D final 06/09/09 12/03/09 - 06/13/10 "Piercing" 06/13/10: Engaged to Re-marry 10/17/10 06/25/10: Expecting baby #3 2/14/11
Compassion....interesting word. I think I am still at the Serenity Prayer stage...I'll leave the compassion to God. She's more of a pathetic character.
As far as x... I remember reading Dear Abby while growing up, and her advice: Are you better off with him, or without him? I know now that it is without him. ***
Went to the zoo with my kids and some great friends today - weather was wonderful and we had a great time! Nice way to wrap up the long weekend (which also saw us work together as a team to clean up the yard - it looks great - can't believe how quickly things changed to Autumn!)
Just got off the phone with x. Seems that he got part of his brain back tonight - he was actually civil. We talked about the kids. Made arrangements for me to get the kids after their visit tomorrow on my way back from zumba, and I don't have to run home like a crazy woman on Fri when they are getting ready to go to his house for the weekend (a sore topic for him). Lots hope it sticks for a while.
Things keep moving along - I can't believe that so much time passes between my own updates, now. I used to write, often many times in a day!
Anyway, things are settled into a routine with school/work/kids. They are both doing really well, especially S14 who is in ROTC and a few different youth groups with a local church. D10 still clings a bit more than I would like - she is just a homebody. I offer to have her friends over, but she'd usually rather be doing her own thing or hanging out with me. She did a basketball clinic but balked at going when she was with x this past weekend - might end up being her personality in the long-run.
I look back on all that I have been through, personally, and time gets all whacked-out. Seems like an eternity and all-at-once, both. The original, out of the blue bomb is nearly 3 years old, and I started therapy the same month - still with the same woman (just saw her today), but going much less frequently. X bought the house and moved his gf and her kids in on Halloween last year, so that is practically a year.
I can say that over the last 2 months, I have finally shut the door. Man, I held on for a long, long time. Most of it was due to the co-dependency, but at the end, it was in hopes for my kids. But I know now that it can never be, not with the person who he chooses to be, the person he was all along but I saw with my fairy-tale glasses. In my own defense, he had many people thinking that he was a true-life hero, Superman in the flesh. I helped him portray that role, too - an unknowing accomplice. And he reinforced my role, that of the princess (though somewhere along the way he started to resent it - most likely when he felt it made him look less-than in the eyes of others).
I can sit here and list the things that I finally see in him, but it isn't really a factor, anymore. In the end, he isn't someone who I have respect for or wish to be friends with...he is just my kids' dad, and I can only hope that he uses his limited time with them well. That is between him and the kids.
The whole thing is sad, and something that I never, ever dreamed could happen, something that just "isn't right, isn't the way things are supposed to be." I wish it wasn't part of my children's story even much more than my own, but they will be ok, too.
My biggest challenge now is to avoid sharing any of the anger that is seeping up with the kids (yes, I am very late to that party - seems that it was pushed down while I had any glimmer of hope left - it was the biggest thing that showed me how closed the door is for me, now). And I still have the immense rage against the girlfriend - something that I hope to overcome - my new task. I am fighting my own inner-mother-bear instincts to protect my kids from her, given the kind of person she is (and always was). But I have to let them come to their own conclusions....I don't want to hurt my kids - they have to feel safe over there. My IC pointed out how I was able to survive my childhood - I fell into denial to survive. What would have happened if I was forced to really see all the dysfunction that I had to endure, with no choices or escape? The kids are the ones who have to find a way to make it ok to be over there.
She pointed out that I really don't have a say over who they care about - not my business, just like it will be impossible to dictate who they fall in love with. But to be secure in knowing the influence and background that I have been able to provide them with - then, to just let them go with it.
I have been pretty good with not sharing my feelings about it with the kids, especially D10. They both know that I don't like her, but I have even told them that it is ok if they find a way to be comfortable over there. That, ANYwhere they go, if they ever feel uncomfortable or threatened, they can always call me or their father and we would help them. It just feels like it will take a superhuman effort to get past this, but then again, I thought the same thing of getting past him, didn't I?
I just hate the pretending, fake-it-till-you-make-it crap that has to go into it. It is very hard for me to hold back, especially something that I am emotional about. That is, holding back from x, not the kids - I want to lay all the things I have learned over the course of 3 years on him, even when I know full well that it won't make the slightest impact at all, on anything (except build up his ego even more, that I went to all that time and energy, that I'm not really over him!) I have let him have it, finally, in a recent phone convo and the last co-parenting session we had - it had to come out for me to shut the door, but it is enough - and I didn't even lay it all out for him. But I did actually get an APOLOGY for the "ugliness" the day after the session - I contribute that to me finally sticking up for myself.
I have to stop, though, to pull myself out of the villan role he has pegged me in. And I don't want to be that stereotypical bitter woman who's husband left her and she went crazy (even if I was for a while). "Hate is a poison we take to kill someone else." When the IC mentioned today that letting this last vestige go is what will bring me peace...
that was when I finally cried. And I'm crying here, too, now. I'm not even sure why.
I remember reading something that, All pain is just resistance to what is.
Why am I resisting this...fear? Of what, really? Why does it make me sick to think that the kids might come to actually like her - when that would make life easier for them?
Is it a loyalty thing? It feels like betrayal, again, if they find a way to like her. Is that fair to ask them, to take sides between their mother and father? Of course not...
Is it the deep-seated, irrational fear that he was right about all this and the reasons he gave for leaving, that I am a terrible person...so, I am trying to prove it was all his fault? The flip-side to his constant blame-game (so much easier to see in others than in yourself).
She said that the kids can't believe that their father left their mother for a monster....is it better for them to think he left their mother for someone who is better?
Damn, I hate being stuck. I hate crying. But I remember back to when my son would get frustrated at rules, limits, etc., and he would cry, and I would tell him that was just the sound of him learning - that growing hurts, sometimes.
I wish I wasn't so thick. Maybe I'll read the boundaries book again.
